Students Ask Don Draper of ‘Mad Men’ to Deliver Commencement Speech

Don Draper is being asked to deliver a commencement speech even though he’s not a real person.

For one trio of students at Creative Circus, a two-year advertising school in Atlanta, that doesn’t seem to matter. They are lobbying for the fictional 1960s-era creative director to speak at their graduation ceremony and share some words of wisdom. Just to be clear, they are not asking Jon Hamm, the actor who plays Draper on Mad Men, to deliver the keynote speech. They want Hamm to play Draper.

For the grads-to-be behind this campaign, this pitch is serious. Deanna Director, David Ma and Mike Quattrocch came up with the idea after watching an episode of Mad Men, the Washington Post reports. Knowing they had some hard convincing to do, they interviewed creative directors at agencies around the country to create a campaign video to get AMC’s slicked-back, debonair ad man to speak at their school.

The three-minute video starts off with the show’s opening score and explains how “inspiration struck” while the students were “having a few drinks”—a nod, of course, to Draper’s ability to come up with ingenious ideas while hitting some serious sauce. Though modern day advertising has veered drastically from the “Golden Age” aesthetic the show explores, the students, along with the (real) creative directors they interviewed, believe Draper is the right guy for the job.

The video has landed on the desktops of AMC execs (who “loved it”), and the company is now exploring the possibility with Hamm.

Turns out, the real world is similar to Draper’s. Anything can happen if you give it the right spin.